In a messaging middleware environment such as the MQ series of IBM, applications communicate by means of queues through a transmission network such as a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN) or a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). On the source side, an application program opens a queue and puts messages into it. A mover or Message Channel Agent (MCA) is the program in charge of moving the messages to a target queue located on the destination side.
When a source application program wants to send a message to a destination application program, it has to communicate with a source queue manager by a Message Queue Interface (MQI) in order to put the message in a transmission queue. Before placing the message in the queue, the queue manager adds a header which contains information from the remote queue definition such as the name of the destination queue manager and the name of the destination queue.
The transmission of the messages is performed via communication channels. These channels can be started manually or automatically. To start a channel automatically, the transmission queue must be associated with a channel initiation queue into which an initiation message is put when the message to be transmitted is put into the transmission queue. A channel initiator which is an MQ series program is used to monitor the initiation queue. When the channel initiator detects a message in the initiation queue, it starts a Message Channel Agent (MCA) for the particular channel being used and the latter program moves the message over the network to the destination side of the channel.
On the receiving side, a listener program must have been started. This program monitors a specific port, by default, the port dedicated to MQ series. When the message arrives, the listener starts the MCA associated with the channels which moves the message into a specified local queue. The program that processes the incoming message can be started manually or automatically. To start the program automatically, the MCA puts the incoming message into the local queue and a trigger message into an initiation queue which is monitored by a trigger monitor. The latter program invokes the application specified in the process definition which issues a command to get the message from the local queue.
In the above system, there may be a communication problem due to a connectivity failure. In such a case, the channel to be used to move the message cannot be initiated and messages are kept in the transmission queue. This may cause an important problem when critical messages whose delivery is guaranteed by the messaging middleware (e.g. database updates, orders, inventories . . . ) are no longer propagated. The only solution to such a problem is to stop the queue manager (thus impacting delivery of the whole business activities) and to manually define an alternate communication path. This is a long, critical and cumbersome process which requires a thorough monitoring of all queue manager intercommunications. Furthermore, this solution results in an important cost since a highly skilled staff must be available and ready to take actions at any time.